


Travel Onwards

by Amemait



Category: Life on Mars
Genre: GFY, Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 11:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amemait/pseuds/Amemait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't a costume party. The mask he was wearing was invisible, just like everybody else's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Travel Onwards

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler warnings: End of Life on Mars, start of Ashes to Ashes
> 
> Notes: It was THERE! Hope nobody else has done this idea already... With bundles of thanks to travels_in_time, who's been ever so patient with me.

DCI Skelton hadn't even thought about it. They'd just given him the job, nice trip back to where he'd started, really. Only now the office was all up to date, and really white and filled with newfangled computers that his four-year-old grand-niece could probably navigate her way through better than he could.  
  
Still. Back to Manchester. It'd been almost fifteen years, and he doubted if anybody even remembered anymore. Remembered Gene, remembered Ray, Annie, Phyllis, hell, even Litton. Those halcyon days, really. Before the world decided that stress was good, that whiskey was bad, that everything will give you cancer and cure it too, and that suspicion was the thing to go with, even though you suddenly needed a warrant to go to the fucking loo.  
  
 _Better ten guilty go free, and all that_.  
  
Tyler'd had a way with words, even when he was drunk. He'd respected that. He'd respected a lot of things, about that DI. Later, once he'd learnt how to 'google', and was feeling nostalgic (with a shotglass of whiskey at his side, staring at him accusingly, whispering that sometimes he should try to let the past be just that), he'd looked up the phrase, couldn't remember who'd said it first.  
  
William Blackston said the modern version. The presumption of innocence was what it really meant.  
  
Well, hell, he'd thought, and downed the rest of his glass, turned off the computer and headed to bed.  
  
That'd been the last time he'd actually thought about Tyler. One late night, drunk and with Internet access.  
  
So it was a bit of a shock when freshly-minted DI Roy walked into his office, and commented lightly (a world of hurt hiding in her voice - he knew the sounds girls made when they were trying to hide how hurt they were, his daughter had made them every single time he'd not made it to a play of hers) on the pictures he'd just finished hanging on the walls.  
  
"Didn't know you knew DCI Tyler, sir. Costume party, was it?"  
  
DCI Tyler. The brilliant young DCI, who'd made it out of a coma, then jumped off the roof. That was the quick, down and dirty version he'd been given before taking this post. Probably didn't want to spook him out of taking the job. Like an officer's suicide could spook him anymore. He'd seen too much of shit like that.  
  
He looked at the photo, hanging beside a fairly similar one from when they'd had Alex with them. His own hair was still just as thick, but greyer, cut closer around a slightly fatter face.  
  
"What, Sam Tyler? This was 1974. Just before the Christmas party. We all got drunk - 'cept Sam, of course. We'd just solved a big case, can't remember what it was about, now, and Phyllis had this new Camera she wanted to try out..." Chris's lips twisted into an old smile. "It's funny, you know. I never really think of him in anything but summertime. But there we all are in winter."  
  
Maya Roy laughed lightly, hollowly.  
  
"Now, sir, if you don't want to say you knew him..."  
  
"I knew a DI Tyler, in the 70s."  
  
"Not DCI Tyler, then? Because that's the spitting image of your immediate predecessor." The words were cold, almost carefully clinical. As though the woman speaking were detached from any emotion connected with the man she spoke of.

Chris looked carefully over at Maya.  
  
She had lines under her eyes. Time may have been kind to him, but it looked like it was taking its toll very quickly on his younger associate. And that was surprising. She had the eyes of someone at least fifteen years older than her file said her age was, and that didn't sit right with him.  
  
Her mobile went off, and she sighed, pulling it out with a nod to her new boss. Chris stared, fingers twitching towards his own mobile.  
  
Sam had said a lot of things when he was drunk - it had almost been a relief when he'd turned teetotaller on them.  
  
\--  
  
It didn't take long to find the grave. And, Chris reflected as he stood in front of it, it made sense that the only thing simple about Tyler would be the end result.  
  
He'd brought flowers. Striped carnations, pink and purple, the first thing he'd seen in the florist's. The shop boy had raised his eyebrows, but didn't explain their meaning, and somehow Chris found himself happy about that.  
  
"You bastard. So all that time, you weren't telling us? Well, s'pose we'd've locked you up."  
  
The marble didn't answer. Not like he'd expected it to, though. A thought occurred, as he laid the bouquet on the ground, bending with knees that didn't quite creak, but really would hurt if he didn't stand up again soon.  
  
"Did Gene know?" he asked. Inspiration. "Did Annie know? Reckon Ray always thought you were mad. He had a reason to though, looks like."  
  
The headstone sat there. Daring him, almost, but then Chris blinked and it was exactly that, a headstone. Just exactly the same as the other headstone he'd put flowers on about seven months ago, the one without a body, the one with different dates.  
  
"...Dammit Gu-Bo-Ty... Dammit Sam. You always had to do things your way."  
  
Chris stood, tipped his head back to look at the afternoon sky. Annoyed, fearful, understanding... Words couldn't quite describe things for him right then.  
  
"That nutter we locked up, he was right about you. Crane, was it?" he asked, not even half-expecting an answer this time. He knew what the answer was to that one, knew it in his bones and in his gut. But the more he thought about it...  
  
"Annie knew, didn't she. That was why you two were so close. So you jumped her up to CID, to keep her quiet. After all, if anybody found out the guy who made her a WDC was a nutter, she'd be kicked down and out again, never get another chance.  
  
"You bastard. You absolute, complete and utter fucking bastard."  
  
The words lacked the heat, and Chris wasn't quite sure if he really meant them, or if he was just saying them for something to say.  
  
"Looking for pearls of wisdom?"  
  
Chris carefully didn't jump, and hoped like hell that Roy wouldn't comment on his choice of flowers either. He didn't quite have enough of a handle on her yet to guess which action she'd take.  
  
As it happened, she merely laid her own flowers down. Yellow chrysanthemums and daffodils. Chris felt like he should wince.  
  
"Not really. Got enough from him already."  
  
"Ha! So you did know him!"  
  
Strange. She seemed... happier here, in the graveyard. By the grave of her dead bos-  
  
No. Not a boss, not just a boss, anyway. That much was clear.  
  
This was the other woman, the one who Sam had left behind. The one he'd been worried about, all those first few days. Maya.  
  
More things clicked into place.  
  
"I might have done. I certainly knew someone with his name. Sam could be a right irritating plonker when he wanted an'all. ...Would you like to go get a drink?" he asked the last part entirely by accident, yet it somehow felt... fitting.  
  
"Excuse me?" Oh, shit, she'd taken it entirely the wrong way. Once, that wouldn't have bothered him. The man who'd last had that nice office with its state-of-the-art computer, however, had taught him to be bothered by things like that.  
  
"No! No. No, I don't mean like that. I mean as friends, like." She blinked, not quite believing him, he could see that. "Teammates, all that. You could tell me all about your Sam Tyler, and I could tell you about mine, how does that sound?"  
  
That tempted her. And to be honest, now he knew the truth, it was hard to not blurt it all out.  
  
'Hi, I knew your ex boss and boyfriend because he turned up in 1973 and was a bit weird and a bit awesome and more than a little bit ahead of his time.'  
  
That'd go down like a new box of casefiles on a bad day in the Collator's Den. Not that there was any such thing as a Collator's Den anymore, of course.  
  
She swallowed, considering. With that look, Chris knew he'd tell her eventually, but not right then. Maybe later, once they knew each other properly, and could count on each other the way that Gene and Sam had, even when they'd been butting heads.  
  
But he'd definitely tell her.  
  
"Yeah. Sure. Sounds like fun. Where'd you wanna go?"  
  
Her eyes were brighter now, a slight smile sliding across her face.  
  
"There's this pub called the Railway Arms..." he explained, shyly smiling right back as they left the graveyard, walking off into the future.  
\--  
fin


End file.
